Why then was its cultivation forced upon these heathen, as Christians delight to call them? Simply and solely for revenue, for the money there was in it. The contracts were of the strictest kind, and the slightest violation of them would make a man a criminal. The plots of land were measured and recorded, the methods of preparing the soil, the time of sowing the seed, the collection of the juice and the saving of the refuse, were all minutely detailed. Every particle of the plant worth anything had to be delivered to Government under pain of fine and imprisonment, and for all his labor and anxiety the ryot got only a pittance, while the Government received a profit of nine hundred per cent. No one ever raised opium under these contracts but at a loss compared with what he could have received from his usual crops. There was no local market for the opium when produced. Probably not a pound a year would have been purchased by the inhabitants if left to themselves. In order to facilitate the use of a drug of which the people were happily ignorant and did not want, the Government licensed men in different places to sell it, and even then there were no sales. To begin the trade these licensees were then ordered to give away samples, and so by degrees the people were educated in the opium habit. In a few years quite a number became confirmed opium users, and the evil, like the virus of a disease inoculated in the blood, spread over the district with its usual demoralizing effect. CHAPTER XXXIII.